Abstract
This issue of ASSAY and Drug Development Technologies covers the development of new technologies in three important areas of research: pneumococcal infective diseases, autoimmune disease and inflammation, and postchemotherapy cognitive impairment.
In 2013, the CDC reported that there were 34,000 cases of invasive pneumococcal disease. 1 The available data showed that in 30% of these cases, pneumococcal bacteria were resistant to standard antibiotic treatment. 2 In light of this, the need for new anti-pneumococcal treatments to combat resistant strains is clear. In this issue, investigators from the Institut Pasteur Korea and the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology report on their discovery of new anti-pneumococcal molecules using a resazurin-based assay to detect Streptococcus pneumoniae growth in 384-well microplates. They have developed a new high-throughput screening system that identified hits where typical methods were unsuccessful.
Autoimmune and other inflammatory diseases constitute an area that is rapidly growing in Big Pharma. In 2015, the autoimmune disease treatment market was valued at US$41 billion, according to Credence Research Ltd., and is expected to grow to US$52 billion by 2022. 3 Areas of active research include inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and lupus. Proinflammatory cytokines have been implicated in many of these diseases. Investigators from Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., have reported on three orthogonal assays for the identification of new inhibitors of FYVE-type zinc finger-containing phosphoinositide (PIKfyve) kinase. PIKfyve inhibitors have been reported to reduce the levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines in both in vitro and in vivo assays. Their report details the development of new assays to screen for inhibitors in this important disease area.
Many cancer survivors who receive endocrine disruptors show some form of cognitive impairment, but causes of this impairment are not well understood.
Investigators from Vala Sciences Inc. have reported on the development of high-throughput assays to test current chemotherapeutic treatment effects on neuronal function. Using Kinetic Image Cytometry™ and quantification via high content analysis, they developed an in vitro model system for postchemotherapy cognitive impairment. This article provides an excellent transition to our next issues of ASSAY, the highly successful SBI 2 issues.
In the upcoming August/September issue of ASSAY, the Society of Biomolecular Imaging and Informatics (SBI
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